Sports teams are apparently convinced that the one thing better than a home game is a game at a place that is not a home to sports at all.

Ten years ago, in a simpler time for staging sporting events, Michigan State held an outdoor hockey game at its football stadium. The event, called the Cold War, drew 74,544 fans, a record for hockey at the time. What seemed like a novelty was actually a precursor: to professional basketball in a tennis stadium and professional tennis on a helipad, to college football in baseball stadiums and an N.B.A. game contested outdoors.

“You’re seeing an evolution,” said Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. “Whether it’s a multipurpose stadium like ours, or a basketball game on an aircraft carrier, you’re elevating the awareness of the venue. You’re creating that ‘wow factor’ beyond the game itself.”

Jones built his $1.2 billion sports palace for more than his beloved Cowboys. He envisioned Cowboys Stadium as a giant stage, easy to configure for events as varied as the N.B.A. All-Star Game, international soccer and women’s professional bowling, which it hosted last week.

Team and league officials and event organizers are capitalizing on the notion that the site alone can make a game distinctive — and attract more viewers. The bigger (championship college basketball inside football stadiums), or more bizarre (a squash tournament at Grand Central Terminal), the better.

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Under the giant video screen at Cowboys Stadium in Texas, four bowling lanes were being built for the United States Women's Open.Credit
Rex C. Curry for The New York Times

“This is an emerging trend,” said Tim Romani, the president of the Icon Venue Group and builder of $3 billion worth of sports stadiums. “It’s about being creative with your stadium, or other venues. We talked with a group in Germany about putting something on a cruise ship.”

The success of the N.H.L.’s Winter Classic provided something of a blueprint. It started with a photograph, one John Collins saw hanging in several offices when he arrived at the N.H.L. in 2006. The photograph showed an outdoor hockey game, a winter sport back amid the elements, and Collins said, “How come we haven’t done that?”

Collins, now the N.H.L.’s chief operating officer, came from the N.F.L., where he witnessed the power of large-scale, transformative events, where he learned that leagues are “limited only by their imaginations and their budgets.” He helped create the Classic to draw corporate sponsors and news media attention. He wanted it to feel like hockey’s Super Bowl, in the regular season.

The game, played annually on New Year’s Day, has taken place in N.F.L. teams’ stadiums (in Orchard Park, N.Y., and in Pittsburgh) and Major League Baseball stadiums (Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston). Since it started, Collins said, representatives from dozens of stadiums in North America — even those in cities without hockey teams — have inquired about hosting.

“I had people tell me it was the first hockey game they ever watched,” said Karl Alzner, a Washington Capitals defenseman. “It was just crazy. I felt like a football player, with 60,000 people in the stands, under all those lights. It felt like a Stanley Cup final.”

Long before the Winter Classic, Michigan State held its outdoor hockey game. The man behind it was Mark Hollis, an athletics administrator who created the 2003 BasketBowl, in which the Spartans played Kentucky in basketball at Ford Field, the home of the Detroit Lions and the 2009 N.C.A.A. men’s Final Four.

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Michigan State and North Carolina will play basketball on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson on Nov. 11.Credit
Lenny Ignelzi/Associated Press

Even then, Hollis was kicking around an idea. He wanted to play a basketball game on an aircraft carrier.

This year, Michigan State and ESPN entered into discussions with the United States Navy, along with the Morale Entertainment Foundation, which arranges events for troops. Nick Dawson, the director of programming at ESPN, said his first thought was, “How in the heck can we pull this off?”

Mike Whalen of Morale Entertainment said his company committed more than $1 million to the project, but the money might be easier than the logistics. If the game, between Michigan State and North Carolina on Nov. 11 (11/11/11), is orchestrated as expected, organizers must account for sun, wind and inclement weather — not exactly the usual issues for a college basketball game.

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Two courts will be constructed on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, which carried Bin Laden’s body to the North Arabian Sea soon after he was killed May 2 in Pakistan. One of the courts will be on the flight deck, its stands wrapped in fabric to block wind; the other will be built on the hangar deck and used in the event of rain.

The ship will be moored off San Diego and positioned so the sun will hover above the court and not shine behind either basket. Should the Navy suddenly need the carrier to leave port, the courts and seating can be disassembled in 24 to 36 hours; they will be tied down, not bolted to the ship. Those who attend — there will be seating for about 7,000 — will have their names printed on their tickets as a security measure.

If it were played at one of the universities’ home arenas, it would be just another college basketball game in November between high-profile teams. Instead, they will forgo the ticket revenue for additional exposure, to compete where no other college basketball teams have.

Whalen saw this as a “test run” for similar games in future seasons, and his group has spoken to the women’s basketball coaches at Notre Dame and Ohio State. The more successful the event, the more other sports will emulate it, and so the cycle goes.

Bob Arum, a longtime boxing promoter, said nontraditional events would become more common and the sites more quirky.

“It’s so much easier to put on something like that now,” Arum said. “With advancements in technology and equipment, you could hold an event almost anywhere.”

Unusual sites lead to other issues. Last year’s Winter Classic in Pittsburgh was marred by rain, and a 2006 women’s college basketball game between Arizona State and Texas Tech was rained out at a baseball stadium. For the Liberty’s game at Arthur Ashe Stadium at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, all 226 pieces of the basketball floor had to be transported from Madison Square Garden. Even in the Cowboys’ multipurpose stadium, sections of temporary seating for the Super Bowl in February were closed because they were deemed unsafe.

Lance Hatfield, a teaching assistant professor of sports venue management at the University of Missouri, said that future developments would come more from pro sports than colleges. There are fewer decision makers and less red tape in pro sports, and pro teams are more inclined to follow successful trends, he said.

“The potential is limitless,” Hatfield said. “But ultimately, the focus has to be on the game itself. People will watch a basketball game on an aircraft carrier for 5 to 10 minutes, but for them to stay, the game better be quality as well. If not, you might as well put a windmill in front of the 18th hole at Augusta National.”

Speaking of golf, the astronaut Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the moon in 1971. Forty years later, the moon remains an untapped sports site, but what has not taken place in space will soon take place at sea.

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2011, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Playing Games Out of Place. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe